


Blood and Rust

by rabidbinbadger



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 9.21, Coda, Episode: s09e21 King of the Damned, First Blade, Gen, Mark of Cain, Spoilers, king of the damned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 22:35:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1581878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidbinbadger/pseuds/rabidbinbadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he held the Blade last it seared through him, burned and screamed into every single cell. He can still feel it faintly lingering throughout his entire body, like an aftertaste. A heat that shifts in his muscles, restless for something else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood and Rust

It’s days later. He thinks he has the Mark back under a semblance of control. He could be wrong, he could be right. It could be laying low, lowering his defences, or it could be submitting to his will. He has a suspicion, but he’s pretending that if he ignores the problem it’ll go away. He is only human after all. He was only human after all.

He remembers faintly that he killed Abaddon. How he killed her, summoned the Blade to his hand. Demonic power or willpower. He doesn’t even pretend to debate this one. He knows. He knows a lot of things that he chooses not to acknowledge. Naming grants things power. Naming recognises them as a choice. Not the only choice, but the one he chose.

His hand aches for the Blade. Flexes around the lack of it. He finds himself drawn to the antique swords displayed in the bunker, manufacturing opportunities to brush against them, touch them. He finds himself making a sandwich and notices that the knife he was using to spread butter is clenched in his hand, point downwards, as if he were about to stab something. He doesn’t bother trying to write it off the unconscious action of years of defensive training. He knows that it’s an echo, a pathetic substitute for what he wants. Needs.

The Mark’s relative quietness worries him. When he held the Blade last it seared through him, burned and screamed into every single cell. He can still feel it faintly lingering throughout his entire body, like an aftertaste. A heat that shifts in his muscles, restless for something else.

He hasn’t killed anyone he knows yet. He should be relieved but he’s just scared. His dreams are full of their deaths. He sees himself creeping out of his room in the small hours, barefoot and tiptoed. He sees Sam’s door, already open. He slinks in, no Blade or blade in hand. He can see Sam’s chest rise and fall under a soft, warm duvet.

He reaches out a hand and wraps it around his brother’s neck, squeezes slowly. He doesn’t want Sam to die sleeping. He needs his brother to wake up, to realise what’s happening and to have no power to stop it. Sam’s eyes snap open, hands come up to try and fight him away. He squeezes harder, digs his fingernails in, gouging, crushing. Sam struggles, nearly throws him off. He growls softly and Sam’s arms and legs are pinned with invisible bonds. He can take his time now. He doesn’t. He kills his brother quickly, efficiently, and moves on to his next target.

In his dream Castiel isn’t with the angels but in the bunker, in the next room along from Sam. He cracks open the door gently, cautiously. He doesn’t know how much noise he made, how light a sleeper his target is. Hearing nothing, he slips carefully in. Cas is awake, waiting.

“Hello, Dean.”

The words stir a dull ache of familiarity, of chances missed and lives lived. The words mean something, just as the angel who said them means something. That’s what makes this worth doing. He thinks he read something similar in a book somewhere, “nothing compares to killing the thing you love.” It doesn’t work if it’s a stranger. The high isn’t the same. It’s what the Mark is trying to teach him, in these dreams.

He walks forward to the bed. Cas looks resigned, accepting. He knows that isn’t the case. He can see the twitch of muscles as the angel subtly readies to fight back. He’s prepared when Cas leaps forward, ducks down and under the angel’s outstretched arms. Cas is holding something, a dart, a bullet, he can’t see exactly what. He can sense it though, the devils trap carved onto it.

He doesn’t give Cas a chance to use it. He grabs the angel’s arm, sears out the remaining fragments and sparks of grace with the same power he’d used to pin Sam. Cas crumples to the ground, winded, fallen, aching with the weight of humanity once more. He stamps on the hand that contains the weapon, smiles as Cas cries out in pain. He kicks it away, crouches down and reaches out, pulls the ex-angel’s face up so that it’s level with his own. He looks in Cas’ eyes, smiles, breaks Cas’ neck.

He jerks awake from the dream, sweating and shuddering. The dream doesn’t scare him, what scares him are the feelings it leaves in its wake. Anger, bloodlust, satisfaction. There’s no horror, not straight away, and when it does come it’s muted.

He gets up slowly, walks to the kitchen and gets a glass of water. His hands are trembling so much he breaks the glass, which brings Sam running.

“Dean?”

The bloodlust and anger curl around his hands, ghosting their actions from his dream, eager to try them in real life. He makes an excuse and flees back to his room. He sits on his hands, but the nervous energy drives him to stand. He paces, jogs on the spot, punches at the wall. The pain sends a rich tingling along his hand and up to the Mark. He recoils, he decides.

He grabs his bag, throws a handful of essentials in and runs out of the bunker. Ignoring Sam’s worried shouts, he dives into the car. He drives. He drives and he drives and he drives. He drives until the rage and the hatred have settled back inside him and been replaced by hunger and exhaustion. He sleeps in his car, wakes the next day with a hollow ache in his stomach. He should have brought food, he doesn’t want to risk being around people.

He risks it. He has to, unless he’s going to walk. He finds a gas station, fills up, eats. He gets back in the Impala and on impulse he takes a different route. He’s no longer driving aimlessly, purposelessly. He has a destination.

*

He stops off at a supermarket near Bobby’s old house. He fills the car with as much food as he can carry, and then finds himself driving around in circles, unable to quite bring himself to reach his destination.

It takes him two hours, but he does it. He drives into the burned out lot, parks the car and searches for the entrance to the basement. It’s covered over with rubble and detritus, but he shifts it without too much hassle and makes his way to the panic room. It’s still standing. Still proofed against everything. He can pass in and out of it for now. It relieves him. He’d had a nagging, whispering suspicion that he’d already be too far gone.

He collects the food from the car, tallies how long he’ll be able to stay locked away down here without going on another shopping trip and frowns. It’s not as long as he’d like.

He quickly realises that he hasn’t thought this through enough. There’s nothing down here to entertain him, to keep his mind away from the aching, itching need to feel the Blade in his hand. He wants it, he needs it. He knows it’s served its purpose now, that Abaddon is dead and he should cast it into the ocean. He can’t though, he won’t. He’ll use it to kill Metatron, and Gadreel, and then he’ll throw it away. Just one more fix, one more time and then he’ll stop.

His phone buzzes. He’s surprised it’s still alive. He doesn’t answer it, doesn’t even look at it. If he looks he might answer, and if he answers Sam, or maybe Cas, might persuade him to come back. He can’t. He’s going to stay here, just until the dreams stop, or until they get a lead. The others can carry on the fight without him for a bit. They’ll have to.

He last for another three hours before he has to get out, go do something. He explores Bobby’s burned out lot, examines a few cars, pokes around the shell of the house for books that haven’t turned to so much pulp and ash. He doesn’t find anything, suspected he wouldn’t. Besides, the point of this exercise was to lock himself away where a devil’s trap could contain him should the Mark break out, not to have him out in the open air.

He folds himself into the Impala and drives to the nearest secondhand shop, picks up as many books as he can carry. He doesn’t even look at the titles. It doesn’t matter what they’re about, he just wants other people’s thoughts in his head now.

He goes into another shop and grabs an armful of magazines and some candles as quickly as he can, trying to interact with as few people as possible. A woman ahead of him in the queue fusses and takes forever getting her change ready. He thinks how easy it would be to reach out and snap her neck. He pinches at the inside of his arm, forgetting how the Mark likes his pain. It sends a lazy pulse of bloodlust, coiling slowly through him. He drops his basket and runs.

*

The books help. So does the whiskey. He drinks until the pages blur and he has to concentrate to decipher each individual word. It’s hard work but it takes all of his concentration, which is what he needs right now.

He feels himself tipping on the border between consciousness and blackout. The Mark seizes its chance, upends the bottle into his mouth, he swallows, gags. The Mark forces him to keep drinking until he chokes, and then it lets him stop. It doesn’t want him dead, but it does want him blackout drunk. He thinks it doesn’t want him here. He’s wrong. It just needs to make one, tiny little adjustment. It waits until he tips over the edge, and then it takes control.

It breaks the devil’s traps in the most infinitesimal way possible. Barely noticeable to the eye, and then it leaves. It’s been too long since Abaddon. It wants to feel the blood running through his fingers, coating his body and dribbling down his throat. It wants him to wake up to that coppery taste with no idea what he did, wallowing and drowning in his guilt and fear. It wants him to suffer as much as he is making it suffer, denying it, starving it.

*

He wakes up, sticky with other people’s blood and guts. He doesn’t feel guilty, he feels angry, he feels hungry. Unlike after his dreams there’s no lingering satisfaction. He feels the loss, the lack, the aching need for the blade.

He’s in one of Bobby’s burned out cars, rust mingling with dried blood. He stumbles back towards the panic room, steps into a devil’s trap, steps out again with no effect. Relief floods him like water into the lungs of a drowning man.

He can’t do this alone, he realises. He scrabbles for his phone, still on, just about. He sends the same text to two different numbers, “Bobby’s”

The Mark shifts on his arm, registering its interest. There isn’t a mirror in the panic room, he hasn’t seen his eyes. He’d be behaving differently if he had.

He thinks the Mark has relinquished control back to him. He’s right, but he’s also wrong. He’s in control because it’s letting him. It owns him now, and as soon as someone arrives the Mark will stretch and settle into his skin. It's going to tear him apart, take away his hope, take away everything he stays good for.

*

He opens his eyes. There’s a body on the floor. It has dark hair and a bloodied white shirt. He doesn’t stay long enough to see who it is. He runs.

**Author's Note:**

> The quote is from 'The Last Werewolf' by Glen Duncan.
> 
> This is unedited because after writing my Disso the idea of having to read back anything I've written makes me feel ill, so apologies for any mistakes.


End file.
